My writing journey
See how I filled 10 notebooks and wrote three books by reading my writing journey.
Welcome to the second installment of my hobby journey series! In this post, I will be sharing my writing journey, which is a unique story in and of itself (pun intended). Continue reading to see how I started, what all I’ve written, and where I am now directing this hobby.
The Early Days of Writing
My interest in writing surfaced Sophomore year of high school when I had a class with an English teacher who set the bar high, especially when it came to writing assignments. She assigned a few books for us to read throughout the semester (such as Fahrenheit 451) and would then require us to select from a few topics that explored various themes and support our stance. This was common across my other high school English classes, but the difference was that she held our work to a higher standard and really challenged how we constructed and conveyed ideas. Years later (this year, in fact), we crossed paths at a local grocery store, and I told her what impact her class had on my writing and my continued interest in writing to this day.
Throughout the rest of high school, I spent a lot of time at parks, which inspired my writing to come. It started with writing journal entries when I was at these parks, which is just something I did for my own sake. When I discovered various types of media and music that made me experience nature in a whole new way, that is when I started writing poetry that encapsulated those experiences.
The first book I wrote was entitled Catharsis, which included the poems I wrote during that phase of my life. These poems also included corresponding photos to the left of them that visualized the way I was viewing the world. I originally published this book on Amazon KDP, but finally had it removed this year since it is no longer reflective of my perceptions and artistic expression. I have a personal copy for myself that I look at from time to time and do think I did a pretty good job when originally going about this. There was also a follow-up to Catharsis that I had written years ago which included some original creative writing passages and shorter poems, but I hadn’t taken it any further than writing it and instead decided to archive the project.
Writing My First Songs
Shortly after writing Catharsis, I had written my first songs for an album concept I’ve worked on for years. These songs were also inspired by all the time I spent in nature, which is why they have a folk undertone to them. Though my poetry no longer resonates in the way it did before, I am glad for that phase of my life because it opened the gateway for writing song lyrics.
Some of the lyrics I improved upon years later, but these first songs still mean the same to me today as they did when I first embarked on this. During this time, I also continued to journal, a practice I would continue for years to come as well.
A Workbook Project
In 2021, I took a bit of a pivot from my creative projects when I decided to create a more ongoing project that was more business-oriented but also had creative elements of its own. That was called Livin’ Analog, and it had quite a few tentacles to it. One of the many aspects of that project was the creation of a workbook entitled The Life Diagram Program. The premise of the workbook was to provide visual resources for people to map out, organize, and put their goals into motion. This way, they would become more productive and live the life they want to be living.
If it sounds like this was a deviation from what I was doing prior, it’s because it most definitely was! Productivity and processes were ideas that had always been important to me in a way when working on my past creative projects (since I always brought them to completion), but The Life Diagram Program was a whole new way of exploring of. I will write a brief summary about what the process of creating a workbook entailed.
For The Life Diagram Program, I originally wrote the first draft. Ideas were dictated into a voice recorder, written on journal sheets, and then structured into a final format. I then created and formatted all the visual resources, which took forever. A few select copies were printed for people to read and provide feedback for improvement. I wrote and created visuals for a few new sections, had the final manuscript proofed, had the final layout done, and then had a few select color copies printed.
That was an oversimplification of a process that took several months to a year. I do, however, still genuinely believe the processes in this book can help non-productive people train themselves to become more productive. I wanted to write a bit extra for this section because it may be the only time I choose to talk about The Life Diagram Program and Livin’ Analog on Hobbyisms since neither align with the direction I am going. Nonetheless, The Life Diagram Program was a key part of my writing journey and did help inform many of my task management processes years later.
The Family History Book
If you have read my past posts on Hobbyisms, you likely observed that I have brought up my family history book a few times now. This project was also a critical part of my writing journey, and one I always knew I wanted to create in my lifetime. If you haven’t read the full story on my family book, read the full process here.
One aspect of the family history book that made most sense to include in this writing journey post versus the family history book post is that it was also the project that made me decide to “retire” from book writing. My family history book was definitely extra hands-on than other projects due to the amount of history family members and other sources preserved, which involved substantial information processing. If you’ve written any sort of book ever, though, you’d know just how demanding it can be to write any sort of book, review and edit it several times over (in several different ways) to make it the best it can be, and then oversee the creative direction of turning it into a finished book.
Book writing played an important role in my writing journey and creative endeavors as a whole, but I now look forward to writing in ways that bring the most excitement and inspiration to me.
Present Day (and Future) Focuses
There are a few areas where I have focused my present writing, which is also where I plan to direct my writing in the future.
Songwriting
I still write songs from time to time, whenever I am inspired and compelled to do so. Songwriting has always been an organic process for me, and I plan to continue writing music (more on this in my upcoming music journey post). Right now, that is predominately folk, but I think it would be interesting to experiment with hard rock or metal as well.
Hobbyisms
I also plan to continue writing for Hobbyisms and always look forward to doing so. There are times I find myself writing Hobbyisms topics for several days consecutively because sharing this information brings me genuine excitement. It also helps tremendously that I write my Hobbyisms posts on my Neo2 word processor, which is much easier on the eyes and helps me stay focused on what I’m writing about.
Personal Writing
Most importantly, I plan to continue writing for myself. This includes free-writing journal entries (somehow, I’ve filled 10 whole journals with just this), writing smaller daily snippets about my thoughts and wins for the day, and targeted writing prompts to accomplish specific outcomes. I’ve benefited a lot from personal writing alone.
A Journey in the Writing
So that is my writing journey! Writing is such a powerful form of processing information and self-expression, and I encourage anyone to write in whatever way words come to them and for whatever purpose.
I hope my writing journey inspires you to pick up the pen, or, at the very least, that hobby you are delaying. Wonderful outcomes and journeys of your own await, and you just never know what that will be unless you get started and stick around long enough to find out.
Happy hobbying!